Terveydeksi!

Which, As We All Know

Is Finnish for "Bless You!" in case you just sneezed.  Or even if you didn't.

     Okay, as we all know by now, Conrad is a terrible person.  One of his principle sources of malicious enjoyment is the misery of others, which the Teutons with uncharacteristic brevity call "Schadenfreude".  I was bewailing the fact that nobody seemed to have done any reviews of "Batwoman" because this is how I get my kicks -

    - okay, okay, if you must know - because I am watching "Guardians Of The Galaxy" with subtitles in Suomi, which is the Finnish for "Finnish" and we'll be back to Finland later on -

     ANYWAY the reason there weren't any reviews was because it hadn't been on, which makes sense.  Absence of evidence and all that, plus it gave the reviewers valuable recovery time due to Repetitive Facepalm Injury.  Art!

Bott Woman*

     
     Your Humble Scribe is pretty sure it goes out again tonight over in South Canada, so we may get more feedback on how low the audience viewing has fallen again <rubs hands and cackles>.  Conrad: officially a terrible person.  Will I be able to continue not posting pictures of the show?  Not sure about that, there are only so many puns you can make around the name Batwoman.  Motley!  break out the cricket equipment, for we shall be playing Hand Grenade Cricket again!

Late Breaking News: Conrad Still Angry

So what's new? I hear you quibble.  SIT BACK DOWN! because I have yet to exhaust my ire against the Codeword compilers of last week.  So far we've had COGENCY and ASSIZES, and then they had the cheek to throw this one in:

"JUXTAPOSE".  Yes yes yes, it's a word I use occasionally on the blog (meaning "close together, side by side"), but I am a literary poseur of the worst kind and, once again, how often does it come up in conversation?  It is an hideous hybrid word, derived from "Juxtaposition" where the "Juxta" is Latin for 'next to' and then they stuck 'position' on the end.

It doesn't end there.  O no. No, the next word I object to is "PHRASAL", which sounds like a Biblical tribe who lived in Canaan and worshipped frogs.  Or maybe it was dogs?  Possibly logs?  Anyway, I'd never heard of it before and it just so happens to be a type of verb, which is too boring to go into.

A Canaan canine.  A real thing, surprisingly enough

     Don't forget, these are all from the SAME Codeword.  Next up was "STASES", a word that had me headscratching and wondering if I'd got the letters correct.  I went back and yes, I'd got the letters correct for the solution.  It is defined in my Collins Concise as the plural of "Stasis", and is yet another word I'd never encountered before.  Not even in Thomas Pynchon.

     Lastly, they used "TYRO", which might have been a hot choice in the spoken vocab back in the age of Shakespeare.  Not today.  It means "Novice or learner" and of course comes from Latin - "Tiro" for "recruit".

A tyro in Cairo

Meanwhile, Back In Finland ...

Conrad came across a Youtube channel called "Beyond The Press" which seems to have started with sensible intentions, yet which is now firmly in Mad Scientist territory.  It is Finnish and the earlier videos are spoken in Finnish, with English subtitles, whilst the later ones have the Finns speaking a delightfully-accented English.  Art!

     Behold the Finnish Space Program, designed to put a car into deepest space.  They were pretty ambitious, intending to reach the Andromeda Galaxy with pizza supplies, which in a round trip would take at least four million years.  Let us see some of the design features.  Art!

     Here the additional booster rockets can clearly be seen, as well as the blast plate at rear, which is what the car will sit on when put into launch position.  O the launch mechanism?  Art!

     There you go, 160 pounds of plastic explosive.  The launch team were delighted to find that their excavator got down to bedrock, meaning the explosion will all be going upwards, rather than wasting energy on soft sub-soils.  Art!

The Finns have added fins

     Everybody retires to a safe distance, which is A Very Long Way Off.  Also note that the launch site is in the middle of nowhere, meaning no risk of collateral damage. Engine start!

Booster ignition

LAUNCH! ooops

   Methinks they may have overdone it with the launch mechanism.  Art?

The largest remaining fragment

Definitely overdid the launch mechanism

     Look at the size of that crater.  Mission control conceded that they may have used too much explosive for the launch, but you can't skimp if you want your pizzas delivered to orbit.  We will definitely be coming back to this channel, because they like blowing things up, an activity Conrad can only approve of.

Hmmmm.  Looking out of the window in my Sekrit Layr, the Atlantic Ocean appears to be making a visit.  Normally I stroll down to Babylon Lite (Royton if we're being formal) of a Sunday afternoon; I don't feel like canoeing it today.

Back To Gallipoli

Nearly at the end of Volume 1, and the narrative has been mentioning the French at Gallipoli, because yes they were there; you might be forgiven for thinking that all the troops at Gallipoli were either Australians or New Zealanders, they make such a fuss about it.  The French made a diversionary landing at Kum Kale on the Asiatic side of the Dardanelles, in order to lure Turkish reserves there, which they certainly did; so much so that they were rapidly outnumbered and needed to be evacuated.

French troops hard at work

     They were also landed on the British beaches as reserves, since the original landing forces were fully committed and expected to be attacked en masse by the Turks.  The Turks were in an equally parlous condition and expected to be attacked en masse by the Entente powers.  Thus the whole situation was obscure to both parties.  The fog of war, as they say.

Finally -

I see that Bitcoin has reached £43,000 per whatever-they-measure-it-in, with all the greedy little goblins who acquire these things no doubt cackling madly and rubbing their hands**.  The BBC puts a cautionary spin on things with a very prescient paragraph: "Critics argue Bitcoin is less of a currency and more of a speculative trading tool that is open to market manipulation"

     And the energy bill driving all their speculation is bigger than that of Argentina.

    It'll all end in tears, I'm telling you.  Tears!

Not a whole lot of use if I want a loaf from the Co-Op

*  Yes a bit obscure.  Go look up "Just William" and his nemesis Violet

** It's only okay if I do it.